This invention relates to the culinary arts, and specifically comprises apparatus for automatically brewing individual servings of coffee in a rapid, convenient, and drip-free fashion.
The conventional way of making coffee is to brew a pot full, discard the grounds, and keep the coffee warm until it is served. It is noticeable that the first cup from a newly brewed pot of coffee has a taste which is different from and superior to that of the last cup: the interval of standing, together with maintained warmth, coact to subtly modify the liquid so that its taste deteriorates.
One obvious procedure is to brew only one cupful at a time, just as instant coffee is made one cup at a time. The generally available coffee making equipment is not well adapted to making coffee in such small quantities, however. If only so much ground coffee is used as is appropriate for a single cup of water, the layer of coffee is not sufficiently thick to allow proper percolation of the water therethrough. To use a larger quantity of coffee and discard it after one cup has been brewed is very wasteful, but passing further cups of water through the same grounds after repeated intervals produces poor coffee because the grounds also deteriorate with time. Finally, it takes nearly as long to make one cup of coffee, by any of these methods, as it does to make a pot full.